


growing apart

by CT2133



Series: Order 66 [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, references to death/pain/injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 13:18:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14261823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CT2133/pseuds/CT2133
Summary: They never knew if a future together was possible. After the smoke from Order 66 clears, Nablis and Cliff live new lives far apart, haunted by the ghosts of their past and the future that never was.





	growing apart

i.

The clone once designated CT-2133, now forever and only Cliff, lies alone in his bunk.

Not so long ago, he’d have called that a normal night. Now, he misses the warmth of another body in his bed. 

The ship hums softly around him, a soothing sound. It fails to lull him to sleep. Finally, Cliff rolls out of bed. Moving carefully so as not to make too much noise, he goes down the hallway to Sal’s door. He opens the door, just enough to poke his head and reassure himself that she’s safe and asleep. 

He’d thought at some point he would stop wanting that reassurance, maybe once she wasn’t such a little girl anymore, but he’s sure now that seed of anxiety will always be there. It stays with you, he supposes, when most everything you care about is taken from you. Nevermind that he’s the one who ran.

It’s a good life, this. Killzone and he have been arguing about that, lately - well, since when do they not argue? He pauses by his brother’s door.He brushes his fingers over the metal of the door, but doesn’t enter. He’ll never stop being desperately grateful that Killzone made it through the battle and recovery, but they’ve always been too different and too stubborn to be easy with one another. Either this will work itself out, or they’ll move on to new arguments, he hopes.

He glances at Tots’ room, then turns and goes back to his own. She probably needs her space, if she’s there.

With a sigh, he closes his eyes. If only he didn’t have dreams.

ii.

_Droids and fire and Quint screaming—_

_The tears in Nablis’ voice warping to feel like another fraud, another manipulation; Cliff is just a dupe—_

_Killzone’s breath wet and pained in his ear—_

_Bishop, Landslide, every brother he left behind, they are all closing in on him. Their voices sound as one: “Good soldiers follow orders.”_

iii.

The world is a blue and green gem, spinning slowly out in Wild Space. Nablis has not seen it from above since they dropped out of hyperspace years ago. Here, she and Ari parted ways; here, she has made a life.

She wakes at dawn to a soft yellow sun and the croaking of the native birds she has come to distinguish from their tones as tillerwhilks, and proncs, and gray marns. The day ahead is one of hard, predictable work. Come harvest time, she, as every able-bodied person, is needed in the fields. Mid-growing season, as it is now, she has her gardens, her teaching, and the time she spends helping minister to the sick.

As she washes and dresses, she makes a mental list of the seeds she wants to find, and ponders the merits of the children knowing galactic political history versus the safety of ignorance, in the unlikely event some insignificant digit of the Empire’s long arm reaches out here. It’s a pleasantly distant thought by now. 

Far away, she knows, the Galaxy lives on without its Jedi. She saw the beginning of the darkness, but will not know its end. Every day, she meditates on her feelings of helplessness, sorting them into neat strands along with her grief and fear and anger. 

Slowly, she makes a fragile kind of peace.

iv.

_—and she steps towards him, out of the bright sunlight, features resolving in an instant to the achingly familiar face, dark eyes smiling. “Cliff,” she says, reaching her hands out. “I told you I would meet you on the other side.”_

_She is dead she is dead she is dead. This must be a trick—_

_She is there, and there is no place for her—_

_She is alive, and they live side by side, and she no longer knows the man he has become._

**Author's Note:**

> my friends urged me to keep the title of this "trashfire post-66 angst v. 2," which it has been since I wrote it. I didn't listen.
> 
> Lots of references in here to in-game stuff and characters mentioned without proper introduction; sorry, this may not be the most readable outside of that. This is up here partly for archival purposes.


End file.
